Tarina
Learn Spanish by translating The little prince
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November 17, 2019
Finished POC and tested POC with mommy!
Coded up a POC for the new language learning app where you learn a language by translating non-boring content.
First up: learn Spanish by translating the little prince. Check it out here: https://tarina.netlify.com/
Review from my mother:
- The text is still a bit too difficult for her as she is at a beginner level of Spanish
- Struggling with verb tenses that are not in presens
If you have time to check it out please let me know what you think, I would be very grateful!
16 Comments
Looks good, and cool animations! I think the UX could be improved a bit though, having to click on every word is pretty annoying. It should be more like a continuous flow where if I know every word I could move pretty fast.
Agree to this.
what do you think about creating an article about how you build it on hackernoon.com?
sure, I'm not that familiar with hackernoon, is it difficult to get a article published?
great idea 💡
I can't speak Spanish conversationally but I know about 1000-1500 words from taking it in high school, so I think this is right up my alley. Interesting app, but the UI is still a bit clunky, even for the small scope. Probably want a way to do this entirely with the keyboard so that it's much faster. Also, don't always default to "don't ask this word again". If I guessed it wrong the first time, absolutely I should see it again. Even if I did get it right the first time, there are probably many words that I guessed correctly from context but want to see again in different contexts. Extremely common words that don't have contextual exceptions (el, la, las, los, un, etc.) might default to "don't ask again". Or, if I've gotten a word right [3, 5, 10] times in a row, then default the "don't ask again".
To make this sticky and make me want to come back again - some sort of display of my current vocabulary. That would obviously require an account which I guess would be one of your next steps.
Overall I think it's pretty cool, and like that the thing I'm translating is actually something interesting. Maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude next? :)
@davenovelli Thank you that's some great feedback! Will change the way "don't ask again" works as you suggested and thanks for the One Hundred Years of Solitude suggestion :)
A list of current vocabulary is on the way already:
We are still thinking of where the interesting texts should come from, a book might be too long and too difficult (I initially thought the little prince would be easy since it's a childrens book but turns out you need to have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of Spanish to be able to make sense of anything).
One idea is to also add news/medium blog posts for content that doesn't require as much of a time commitment as a whole book, would that be interesting for you?
Yeah, i think blog posts (or... maybe tweets??) would also be great. I can't imagine I'd make it all the way through a novel, but a chapter might be a reasonably challenging task.
One other note I forgot originally - there were a few cases where a word had some addition context after completing the translation. That was great... more of that!!
Haha tweets would be fun, imagine "Learn Spanish by translating Donald Trumps tweets"
I can try it. My mother language is Spanish. Castilian.
Thanks, how do you find the translations?
Might want to do this with people you don’t know as well and pay them for their time. You may miss things if your mom is too nice (or too used to the idea) to point them out.
Yes my mother definitely has some biases in my favor (I hope) :)
Do you do this for other languages too? I’d love to try it out.
What other language would you like to learn?
Hey ! Some of the translations are wrong.
Selva means Jungle not forest
Historias vividas means liver stories not true stories
Estampa is not a picture is a stamp.
He aqui is not a cool way of saying looking or behold. Actually is a formal way when explaining. And the most accurate would be Here it is.
A is not To
On the first question.
What I really liked is the fact that is based on the principito.
Edit.
Make sure you teach Castillian Spanish. Not south America because down there they used really different words.
If you need help let me know. I did some video translations years ago for Ted Talks.